Monday August 13, 2012, 7:48 pm
It said it right in the title the "grand delusion" is only made possible by their illusions. Yup, keep selling us off and out, for peanuts, and leave our children holding the bag. I know the tolls I paid when I first moved back to help my Mom were within reason, not great but within reason, but 4 years later they had more than doubled. It was not at all reasonable and my ability to pay for them, along with the increased gas monies at the same time deminished, which also meant I couldn't go help my Mom as often and therefore she eventually had to be placed in a home, costing the taxpayers far more.

Sort of like that saying a penny save a pound foolish or something like that. I'm just disgusted with the stupidity of so many who can't come up with better solutions or keep following the same failed plans.

Tuesday August 14, 2012, 11:31 am
Privatization sounds like a good idea, and often seems beneficial, at least initially, but longer term it doesn't work out that way. When private profit becomes more important than public good, guess which gets screwed.

Wednesday August 15, 2012, 5:21 pm
Privatization and deregulation never work - private sector will only strip away anything of value, and is only responsible to stockholders - it can never be taken at its word, because it is not honorable/honor-bound.

In order to make private sector's involvement work, there have to be numerous safeguards in place, plus some very powerful and independent enforcers of public2private contracts, with a bite that hurts (ie., possibility of sanctions including cash clawbacks for non-delivery, late- or partial delivery of contracted services).

By the time the beancounters add up all the costs, it will very often transpire, that it would actually be cheaper to bring those services back in-house, and stop using private sector.

Wednesday August 15, 2012, 8:30 pm
Privatization of Prisons only compounds the problems of our "Prison Industrial Complex. "Institutional Racism" is the new Jim Crow with the "Drug War" harvesting 4 times as many people of color as whites per capita. with 2/3rds of those arrests being for the nonlethal proven medicinal herb Marijuana/Cannabis. In my home state of Minnesota we now hve a 9 to 1 ratio and have the highest percent of our population in prison of all 50 states. This makes us the 16th most Racist state in this nation. Two groups profit from this blatant Racism, the gangs that have increasingly spilled out of our ever growing prison population, and the public employee Unions that have gained political power through their increased numbers. We have only 1 private prison in Minnesota and that tends to cater to Federal prisoners. Between 1.2 and 1.4 million US citizens have their voting rights stolen over the use of Cannabis every year.